Happy 225th Kentucky!

As we look forward, we also look back. The Kentucky of today would be unimaginable to the frontiersmen and keelboat operators of the 1780s who wanted independence from Virginia, in part because of its cavalier view of trade along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

Becoming the 15th state was not easy. The process began in 1784 in Danville and at one point Kentucky considered joining Spain instead of the United States. Can you imagine how that idea, pitched by Gen. James Wilkinson, would have changed our society if not overturned?

Louisville, instead of being named for King Louis XVI of France might have been named for Bernardo de Galvez or King Charles of Spain.

The topography has not greatly changed. Skyscrapers can be found in only a handful of cities. Our roads are improved versions of the early stagecoach paths. The Maysville Road from Old Washington to Lexington, while many of the kinks have been removed, follows the trail Simon Kenton and Daniel Boone would have traveled to reach Duncan Tavern in Paris (which might be named Madrid).

Most of the earlier settlers were farmers, and they grew lots of corn. Some of that corn was distilled into whiskey, which over time evolved into bourbon, but none of it was in commemorative bottles, autographed by basketball players, nor dipped in wax. Can you imagine Kentucky without basketball?

As hard as that is to imagine, 50 years ago no one could foresee a Kentucky nearly void of tobacco crops.

When Kentucky became a state, virtually everyone owned a horse, and two-thirds of the population owned two or more. Our ancestors were noted animal breeders then, too, but not Thoroughbreds—mules.

The adage claims the more things change the more they stay the same, but can you imagine a Spanish-speaking Kentucky built around the mule trade? The Kentucky Mule Park doesn’t have the same ring, but maybe this tidbit of lore explains our inherently stubborn nature.

Wanderlust and courage spurred Daniel Boone and early settlers to pioneer a path to what would become Kentucky, but it was cultivating corn that allowed them to stay. Before Kentucky was admitted to the Union in 1792, Virginia law required settlers to demonstrate the legitimacy of their land claims by “erecting a cabin and planting a patch of corn.” Agriculture meant permanency, and just as one grain of corn grows into many, a few settlers would grow into a Commonwealth.

Now, 225 years later, our soil and waters still sustain us. Perhaps we forget what a lifeblood agriculture is to our state. Travel anywhere in the world, and Kentucky needs no introduction. “Oh, yes,” people will say with a nod, “bourbon, horses, tobacco and fried chicken.” We are, in fact, world renowned, the fame made possible by Kentucky’s original signature industry: agriculture.

Kentucky’s farm economy has been, and will continue to be, Kentucky’s rural economy. The journey to developing the world’s top horse industry, the largest cattle state east of the Mississippi, an $8 billion bourbon industry, a $1 billion poultry industry, and most recently, a vibrant local food economy, continues to shape our people, our sense of place, and perhaps even our politics. Our largely rural population still relies on raising crops and livestock, and economic leaders in Kentucky cities have embraced our abundant agricultural resources as local business assets.

Reflecting on our past may predict what our agricultural future holds. Near the turn of the 19th century, there were fewer than 100,000 people living here, and most of them had to farm to feed themselves. Today, each farmer in the United States feeds 155 people worldwide, and while Kentucky farms are much smaller than the national average, the 77,000 farm families in the Commonwealth feed a substantial number of individuals.

Market forces in American agriculture have changed over the past 25 years, and we have entered an era where customers on the other side of the planet depend on our food, while our generally well-fed neighbors increasingly dictate how we farm. The types of crops and livestock we raise 25 years from now may not change much, but how we farm in Kentucky certainly will.

Traceability of all farm products will be the norm. A farm or processor’s record on animal care, labor practices, pesticide usage and environmental stewardship will be reflected on product labels at the grocery store, with report cards from third-party auditors signaling to consumers that the product matches their values.

Government regulations won’t be the dominant driver of farm practices—consumers will, or at least the vocal, organized ones. Consumers will call on retailers to source only food from farms that are “doing what’s right” by their standards, and through online petitions, brand boycotts and storefront picketing, retailers will be compelled to make producers change how they farm, or they will lose business.

Kentucky farmers in the year 2042 still will be providing food for their neighbors and local communities, but their top customers may be thousands of miles away. Even more so than today, barges bound for the Gulf of Mexico, then on to international ports, will be filled with western Kentucky soybeans, eastern Kentucky timber and vats of well-aged distilled corn to meet demand from India, China and African nations’ emerging middle classes.

Granted, the prospects for trade deals in today’s political climate may be uncertain, but the vast majority of the 9 billion people projected to live on Earth a quarter-century from now will reside outside the United States, and if projections for rising incomes in developing nations hold true, those countries will demand 60 percent more meat and dairy each year than what is currently produced.

American agriculture still will be the envy of the world, but declining government support for agricultural research, the Cooperative Extension Service, conservation programs and crop insurance will let our international competitors close the gap. Kentucky farmers, though, should adapt just as they always have, by embracing precision technology to farm not field by field, but inch by inch.

In the early 2000s, tractors started coming equipped with global positioning satellite technology. Twenty-five years from now, you may be hard-pressed to find a piece of farm equipment that isn’t digitally connected, and some of it will be autonomous. Farmers will have precise control of water and crop inputs, and advances in crop and animal genetics will help farmers guard against disease and climate volatility more than ever.

When Kentucky reaches its 250th anniversary, much about agriculture will be different, but the hard stuff will be the same. Farming will continue to be incredibly difficult and subject to unpredictable weather and markets. Yet, just as our early settlers built our communities around the land and its harvest, farmers will continue to be fundamental to what makes Kentucky our home.

— Brent Burchett

Brent Burchett is director of the Kentucky Department of Agriculture’s Division of Value-Added Plant Production.

The first settlers who came to Kentucky left their homes behind but brought their cultural heritage with them. The earliest acknowledged Kentucky literary work, Thomas Johnson’s The Kentucky Miscellany, was published in 1789. In 1792, when William Whitley built his brick home near Stanford, “He set his monogram in the façade as if to proclaim that the Kentucky frontier was neither uneducated nor anonymous,” according to The Kentucky Encyclopedia.

Since then, Kentucky artists and writers have created artworks in every region. While larger cities like Lexington and Louisville tended to take the lead in fine arts, Appalachia combined folk culture, artistic expression and practical function to produce fine basketry, traditional musical instruments, handmade brooms, pottery, quilts, wooden chains and toys. In every region, European and African ancestry influenced folk songs, ballroom and backwoods dance, frontier tales, legends and a narrative celebrating untamed natural beauty.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, arts and cultural organizations were established, and a framework of public support and private philanthropy developed. Kentucky communities celebrated the arts and culture through libraries, theaters, orchestras, opera and dance companies, women’s clubs, nature preserves, local museums, fairs, festivals, schools and colleges and universities.

Between the 1960s and ’80s, a network of arts and culture-related entities emerged. The War on Poverty spawned Appalshop to document and preserve cultural traditions and teach vocational skills to poor and minority youth in eastern Kentucky. Cultural attractions, such as Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, blossomed into tourism destinations. From Ashland to Fulton, Kentucky Educational Television broadcast cultural experiences and instructional programs to every public school in Kentucky. The Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence advocated for improvement of education in all disciplines, including the arts.

Providing support and training through grants and programs as the state arts agency, the Kentucky Arts Council fostered opportunities for the people of Kentucky to value, participate in and benefit from the arts. Dedicated to telling Kentucky’s Story, thus nurturing a legacy of pride in the wealth of Kentucky culture, the Humanities Council built civic engagement and supported local humanities programming.

Since the beginning of the new millennium, despite the comprehensive network of public and private support, Kentucky arts agencies, organizations and artists have faced a faltering economy. The proliferation of technology and social media may have changed audience preferences. Moreover, in a weak economic recovery, public funding and private philanthropy have reached a new level of vulnerability.

Recently, President Donald Trump unveiled a budget plan that eliminates funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Reflecting those sentiments, Gov. Matt Bevin reorganized the Kentucky Arts Council.

According to Don Parkinson, secretary of the Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet, “The new arts council will focus on ensuring that Kentucky artisans have the skills and knowledge to develop and successfully sell their products.”

With an eye on commerce, the STEM disciplines—science, technology, engineering and math—stand center stage in education, with promises of economic development and job creation. Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton told the staff of Eastern Kentucky University’s student newspaper that students should focus on programs that produce jobs.

“I would not be studying history,” she said, “unless you have a job lined up.”

Forecasting what is on the horizon for the arts seems impossible, but envisioning Kentucky without them is one way to assess alternatives:

Imagine your city or town without a museum, a historical society, a place to make and exhibit art and crafts, with no space for gatherings like public debates or music performance. What innovative job creators seek a community lacking a library or performance space? Despite opportunities to experience the arts in virtual reality, don’t public gatherings and shared experiences continue to add value? Isn’t first-hand enrichment through arts and culture essential to lifelong learning in an increasingly competitive worldwide marketplace?

Frank X Walker, Kentucky poet laureate for 2013-14, is optimistic. “After 9/11, the arts became more relevant. Traditional non-users began to see them as more important,” he said. “In these spaces, the arts can experience a resurgence.”

Describing the current environment as part of a “painful transition,” Walker believes artists “will dive into the curve and ride it like a wave.”

— Constance Alexander

The 2003 Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship recipient and 2014 recipient of the Governor’s Award in the Arts, Constance Alexander is a poet, author, broadcaster, playwright and promoter of the arts. She lives in Murray.

The numbers are impressive: Kentucky’s automotive industry churned out 1.3 million vehicles manufactured at five different plants across 80 counties in 2016; exported $5.5 million in vehicles and parts in 2014; and contributed $14 billion to the Commonwealth’s GDP annually.

“While we love our friends in our other signature industries in bourbon, tourism, basketball and coal, we do think there is an argument that automotive is a signature industry as well,” said Dave Tatman, executive director of the Kentucky Automotive Industry Association.

It’s an industry that was born in 1912, when Ford opened a sales and service office on South Third Street in Louisville. Four years later, thousands of Model As, trucks and cars were churned out of a four-story brick building, launching Kentucky into the automotive world.

Fast forward to the mid-1980s when then-Gov. Martha Layne Collins convinced Toyota Motor Manufacturing to locate its first North American operation in Georgetown. “The huge impact on the growth of the automotive industry in Kentucky has been the choice of Toyota to locate here,” Tatman said. “There are significant numbers of suppliers that came here because Toyota was here.”

Around the same time Toyota began production, General Motors launched its Corvette plant in Bowling Green, eventually making it Corvette’s sole manufacturing facility in the country.

With Ford, Toyota and General Motors having established roots in the Bluegrass State, other automobile manufacturing suppliers began to take notice, particularly because of the cost of energy, the Commonwealth’s location and its robust highway system. “With respect to the 13 states we compete with, our energy cost is the lowest of all automotive states,” Tatman said. “We’re geographically the center of the region with 67 percent of America’s population within less than a day’s drive. We really are well-positioned.”

That position results in three major automakers operating in Kentucky: Ford’s Louisville Truck Plant and the Louisville Assembly Plant, Toyota’s Georgetown facility, and General Motors’ Corvette plant.

As a result, two-thirds of the Commonwealth’s counties have automotive production facilities or supply operations.

Tatman also is looking forward to continued cooperation from Kentucky’s governor and General Assembly to further support the automotive industry. “The General Assembly and the administration, almost independent of party, have been very supportive of the industry,” he said, making the state well-positioned for the future.

“We have experienced exponential export growth over the last years, and now automotive exports are the second-highest value export in Kentucky. [Moreover,] Kentucky suppliers are also playing on the global stage,” he said.

Automotive exports continue to supply the world with cars and parts, second only to Kentucky’s aerospace industry. Tatman added that advanced research and manufacturing are taking place in all of the Commonwealth’s 490 plants. “From a technological standpoint, I can walk into a nondescript steel building in Glasgow and see some of the most amazing manufacturing process technology that exists in the world,” he said.

As for the challenges, Tatman doesn’t see “any huge storm clouds on the horizon,” other than the challenge of recruiting more workers to join the nearly 90,000 automotive workers already employed in the industry.

“Everybody is experiencing this worker shortage,” he said. “We’ve raised two generations of Americans that think manufacturing is dirty, dark and dangerous, and they don’t want to work there. Quite the opposite is true.

“I spend a lot of time in high schools and middle schools and elementary schools talking about careers in manufacturing … to channel our young people and our underemployed workers that way and to convince them that manufacturing is not dirty, dark and dangerous, but is, in fact, a very rewarding career for those who choose it.”

The late Ova Haney, former master distiller of Four Roses, was once asked why bourbon is made of corn. Haney quipped that if rice had grown here, it would have been made out of rice. Bourbon has earned its current fame in the international spotlight, but it’s easy to forget that what is today an $8.5 billion industry started out as nothing more than a way to preserve the crops.

Bourbon experienced growing pains on its way to becoming one of Kentucky’s signature industries. Dishonest businessmen posed a threat to bourbon’s reputation before there were consumer protection laws by calling liquids bourbon that were not bourbon. Often, tobacco spit, prune juice and battery acid were used by rectifiers to “rapidly age” their spirits so they would resemble bourbon. Legitimate bourbon distillers fought back by pushing for laws that required certain standards to be met for a spirit to be referred to as bourbon on the bottle’s label.

Bourbon was dealt another blow with the 1919 passing of the Volstead Act, which outlawed the production, transportation and sale of beverage alcohol. A provision was made for medicinal purposes, and throughout Prohibition, only six Kentucky distilleries were licensed to sell medicinal spirits. All the other distilleries had to sell their aging bourbon to those distilleries for sale in 100-proof, bottled-in-bond pints. To be labeled “bottled in bond,” the bourbon had to be aged and bottled using the requirements outlined in the United States Standards of Identity for Distilled Spirits, which originally were stipulated in 1897’s Bottled-in-Bond Act. Many distilleries subsequently went out of business.

Even after the repeal of the Volstead Act, the Kentucky bourbon industry continued to experience hard times. World War II brought with it a renewed demand for ethanol for gunpowder and synthetic rubber, and any distilleries that hadn’t already been retrofitted during World War I began to make the switch. When the war was over, another challenge came to the bourbon industry: James Bond. Bond wanted his martinis shaken, not stirred, and suddenly bourbon was out.

Fortunately, throughout these rough patches, bourbon distillers kept the tradition alive, even going so far as to have bourbon declared “America’s Native Spirit” by Congressional resolution in 1964. When bourbon wasn’t popular at home, it was promoted in foreign markets. Master distillers and brand representatives spent decades pounding the pavement hand-selling their products in bars and liquor stores across the country and beyond, paving the way for the connoisseurship the industry finally began to experience in the 1990s.

Growth in bourbon tourism followed. Many distilleries have a long history of tourism, but bourbon’s rising popularity has led to an increase in the number of people who want to see where and how bourbon is made. This cycle of connoisseurship to tourism leads to more of both. “Because of the growing interest in bourbon, there will be a continued growth in bourbon tourism, creating even more growth in sales both domestic and export,” says bourbon historian Michael Veach.

The Kentucky Distillers’ Association has led the charge to capitalize on the popularity of bourbon tourism to keep the cycle going. It recently successfully lobbied the state legislature to pass a law that allows by-the-drink sales at distilleries, giving distilleries greater flexibility and visitors more options. “I do think that we will continue to be the place for people to experience bourbon hospitality and culture, as I think by then our license changes will have allowed more freedom and flexibility to showcase our products,” says Kentucky Bourbon Trail Senior Director Adam Johnson. “We will be much more the comprehensive experiential destination with our distilleries being able to have restaurants and bed and breakfasts. Additionally, the efforts in our international markets will continue to fuel category growth and interest in bourbon tourism.”

According to the KDA’s 2017 biannual economic impact study, bourbon production in Kentucky has increased 315 percent since 1999, and the Kentucky Bourbon Trail is closing in on 1 million visitors a year after experiencing 17 percent growth from 2015 to 2016. Kentucky distillers pay $800 million a year in payroll to the 17,500 jobs the industry adds to the Commonwealth while investing $1.1 billion in capital projects over the next five years. Distillers are responding to the growth by adding not only more production facilities, but also event spaces, bed and breakfasts, and restaurants to their visitor experiences. Growth worldwide leads to tourism, which leads to still more growth. Distillers are gearing up for both.

In 25 years, there will be a lot of bourbon on the market, and some of it may even be the hard-to-find, extra-aged stuff that has been exciting collectors in recent years. Thanks to diversified tourism options at distilleries, consumers will continue to visit, though today’s unprecedented growth is likely to slow down. Bourbon has experienced a bumpy road along the way to becoming one of Kentucky’s signature industries, but thanks to the hard work and determination of previous generations, Kentuckians will be able to rely on this industry for generations to come.

— Maggie Kimberl

Maggie Kimberl is a spirits journalist and Louisville native who loves learning about local history. When she’s not uncovering bourbon lore, you can find her tending her homegrown tomatoes or exploring with her kids.

As the rock lyricist Jim Steinman once wrote, “The future ain’t what it used to be.”

Looking back on the state of higher education in the Commonwealth in 1992, colleges and universities appeared to be the one part of Kentucky that had an easily predictable future. Then came the Kentucky Postsecondary Education Improvement Act of 1997. Known as House Bill 1, the legislation altered the state’s higher education landscape. For a few years, it also included significantly increased spending on higher education, which many state university presidents mistakenly assumed would be a new normal.

One of the more significant parts of HB 1 was the Research Challenge Trust Fund, known as “Bucks for Brains” because it helped create dozens of endowed programs at public universities that had embarrassingly few. It also charged the University of Kentucky with becoming a top-20 public research university, the University of Louisville with evolving into a nationally recognized metropolitan research university, and the regional universities with developing at least one nationally recognized program. Things looked pretty good for higher education as the 20th century came to a close.

But then several major events forced the state to drastically scale back spending on higher education: the dot.com bubble burst (2001), a gubernatorial sex scandal (2002), the Great Recession began (2008), and a multibillion-dollar hole developed thanks to several budgets that skipped actuarially recommended payments into state pension funds. Those events put to bed serious talk of developing a nationally recognized university in the Commonwealth, much less a top-20 school.

One legacy of HB 1, however, that stands tall today—and could help prepare Kentucky for some of the higher-education challenges of the next quarter-century—is the Kentucky Community and Technical College System.

KCTCS emerged when the community colleges were taken from UK and merged with Kentucky Tech, formerly known as “vocational schools.” Since its inception, KCTCS has done an excellent job responding to changing market forces by providing postsecondary educational opportunities to Kentuckians who had been underserved and ignored for decades. More than 100,000 Kentuckians are now enrolled in KCTCS, making it the state’s largest postsecondary institution and one of its most consequential.

When the community colleges were freed from the shackles of an often indifferent and sometimes-hostile Big Blue bureaucracy in Lexington, that meant they could partner with area colleges and universities—both public and private—to offer baccalaureate and graduate degrees demanded in local areas. A shining partnership is the University Center of the Mountains. Located at Hazard Community and Technical College, UCM works with almost a dozen colleges and universities to provide low-cost bachelor’s and master’s degrees in professions desperately needed in that mountain region.

UCM can be a blueprint for what Kentucky higher education will require over the next 25 years. Because of the state’s pension crisis—second-worst only to Illinois—lawmakers are likely to have even fewer resources to spend on higher education, so higher education will have to become more innovative and embrace initiatives similar to UCM.

To make the financial environment even worse, Kentucky’s public universities don’t enjoy a strong fundraising tradition, outside of oversized support for football and men’s basketball. At barely more than $1.1 billion, UK has one of the smaller endowments among public research universities. (Its endowment only recently eclipsed the size of Berea College’s.) Kentucky’s other state universities have smaller endowments, none of which adequately serve the needs of their respective institutions.

Other outside forces that will make the next 25 years increasingly difficult: With less state funding, families will be asked to pay more for college while real income is expected to remain stagnant, further contributing to a steady rise in student loans; the pool of potential traditional undergraduates is barely expanding, and those students cost more to enroll because competition for them has become more fierce; and there is increased demand from businesses for graduates who have a combination of soft and hard skills, and also have the ability to learn new skills on the job.

It’s hard for higher education to significantly reduce its operating costs without changing its operational DNA. As National Public Radio education reporter Anya Kamenetz pointed out in a 2015 talk at UK, higher education suffers from Baumol’s cost disease—its labor costs rise while productivity essentially remains the same. There are no robots or algorithms (yet) to teach, advise and mentor students.

In the next 25 years, Kentucky higher education must help produce what U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska recently called “a society of lifelong learners.” As Sasse wrote, the disruptive knowledge economy will demand “a culture in which people in their 40s and 50s, who see their industry disintermediated and their jobs evaporate, get retrained.”

Developing a society of lifelong learners and meeting their evolving needs won’t come easily for higher education. Higher-ed leaders have been conditioned to prepare students to graduate with skills that are in demand in the present rather than those that will equip them with the ability to change over time and prepare for the final job of their career.

Rethinking that approach becomes all the more important when organizations such as the World Economic Forum remind us that about 65 percent of children who currently are in the early years of elementary school “will end up working in completely new job types that don’t yet exist.”

College and university leaders also continue to give a disproportionate amount of attention to serving 18- to 24-year-old students over the age groups that are coming to represent a plurality of college students.

But if the leaders of the state’s public and private colleges and universities can readjust their focus and partner more often with KCTCS on projects similar to UCM, Kentucky might be able to meet the higher-education needs of the mid-21st century.

— Duane Bonifer

Formerly director of public relations at Lindsey Wilson College in Columbia, Duane Bonifer is executive director of communications and marketing at Monmouth College in Monmouth, Illinois.

Danville, Kentucky; Christmas Day, 1809: Jane Todd Crawford had just survived the world’s first ovariotomy under the skilled hands of surgeon Ephraim McDowell, thereby launching Kentucky into the annals of medical history.

Since then, Kentucky’s healthcare industry has become known for other firsts, including the first hand transplant in 1999 and as the home of Drs. A. Bennett Jenson and Shin-je Ghim, inventors of the world’s first cervical cancer vaccine.

Stephen Williams, former CEO of Norton Healthcare, said that the roots of Kentucky’s healthcare industry are in faith-based ministries. “Literally, in the wagon-train days, you had nuns in the Catholic arena who would establish outposts and clinics,” he said. “The Louisville children’s hospital came out of a Presbyterian women’s group. Jewish Hospital, of course, started serving the Jewish community.”

Over time, municipalities began to see the importance of improving public health with amenities such as sanitation, clean water and vaccinations. “The old Louisville General was run by the County Board of Health,” Williams said.

Since the 1970s, he said, the Commonwealth has seen more and more proprietary, for-profit hospitals take over the healthcare scene.

“A lot of that was borne out of the fact that when the government programs were established in the late 1960s and mid-1970s—plus the fact that you had fee-for-service insurance companies—you had most of the population covered [financially],” he said. “That financial environment began to be attractive to organizations that would be investor-driven. It did bring a lot of money to the industry sector that created growth in the field and injected a lot of money.”

Patrick Padgett, the executive vice president of the Kentucky Medical Association, said Kentucky blazed “a lot of trails” in improving public health, medical education and, in more modern times, medical politics.

“Since the early 1990s, Kentucky has been ground zero for the politics around health reform and health reform initiatives,” he said. “Political leaders from Kentucky set the tone for what’s going on at the national level. Some [policies] went forward, and some didn’t.”

But the cloud that hangs over Kentucky’s healthcare industry is Kentucky’s wellness rankings against other states in the country.

Williams said the Commonwealth is known for “very poor lifestyles,” which have created a high number of chronic conditions.

Trust for America’s Health ranks Kentucky fifth in the nation in poverty, fourth in diabetes, fifth in obesity and fourth in physical inactivity.

“Heart disease, diabetes, cancer—all those things drive the health of our population to the near bottom,” Williams said.

Padgett noted that while Kentucky has made advancements in bettering public health, there is plenty of room for improvement.

“It’s interesting when you go back and look at the history of medicine in Kentucky. One of the issues is the lack of medical providers in rural areas,” he said. “[It’s] 100 years later, and we’re still talking about lack of medical providers and medical care in rural areas. I think some would say that’s translating into the urban areas as well.”

But it’s not all doom and gloom.

“We’re getting better,” Padgett said. “We’re still near the bottom, but we’re better than we were 15 years ago with technology, better medicines and things like that.”

Williams said there unquestionably will be “phenomenal” advances and breakthroughs in both research and clinical care. But he also predicts that Kentucky will see healthcare financing “turned upside-down.”

“We have to quit getting paid by volume,” he said. “The industry will, I think, make a fundamental change in the way healthcare is delivered. We get paid by the unit of service—every time you see the doctor, somebody pays somebody. We’ve got to have a system where we are paid to keep people healthy, an incentive to keep people healthy instead of doing more volume.”

That means Kentucky should see an improvement in preventive care.

“We have the information systems. We have the capability to do that now,” Williams said. “We didn’t 20 years ago.”

Central Kentucky’s signature Thoroughbred breeding industry is going through changes as big as it has ever seen since setting down roots in the late 1860s.

The number of live Thoroughbred foals produced in 2015 and 2016 was the lowest recorded since 1968. These smaller crops have created a stark polarity in the auction market, where demand is high at the top end, drops off sharply in the middle market, and is practically nonexistent for the least expensive stock. Fewer horses result in racetracks cutting back on the number of races they can offer, resulting in a 30 percent decline in live races since 2000. Fewer races mean fewer owners, which depresses demand at auctions. It’s a vicious cycle.

Making a living in a venture as high-risk as raising and selling Thoroughbreds has made Kentucky horsemen and horsewomen accustomed to withstanding these economic gut checks. The latest challenges are just another chapter in a 150-year history of turmoil and triumph.

When the first recorded races were held in Lexington five years before the Commonwealth joined the Union as the 15th state, Thoroughbred breeding and racing existed primarily as hobbies. Fewer than 4,000 Thoroughbreds were registered in the United States between 1803 and 1892. Thoroughbred breeding and racing changed following the Civil War by adopting a new professionalism. In the book Racing in America, author John Hervey noted a shift away from a semiprivate amateur sport to a more public and professional venture. Racing evolved “into a great popular amusement for the whole of the citizenry, conducted as a rule by associations semi-professional if not wholly professional in character,” Hervey wrote.

At this time, East Coast horsemen were well acquainted with the natural benefits of the Bluegrass region’s calcium- and phosphorus-enriched pastureland that strengthened the bones of young horses. Professional and well-organized, Kentucky’s Thoroughbred community began transforming the area into a major breeding center and surpassed the efforts of breeders in Tennessee, Maryland and Virginia, according to Hervey.

Professionalism led to the establishment of a robust commercial marketplace that drove the national foal crop from about 99,000 in the 1950s to 182,500 in the 1960s. Big returns at auctions attracted speculators in the 1970s and early 1980s, when gross revenue at Keeneland’s September yearling sale exploded from $5.1 million in 1970 to more than $61.7 million by 1985. This high-flying market would crash in 1986 when federal tax breaks evaporated and the market collapsed under the burden of hyperinflation and overproduction.

Recovery would not come until the mid-1990s, but never again would the market sail quite so high. Nor would the roller coaster stop. Overproduction eroded auction prices by 2006, and then the Great Recession hit, making an already bad situation much worse. Over the next seven years, Thoroughbred foal production in North America rolled back to 22,500.

“We are becoming a niche industry again,” said Arthur B. Hancock III, the owner of Stone Farm near Paris whose great-grandfather came to Kentucky from Charlottesville, Virginia, to raise Thoroughbreds and farm. “I’m 74, and I can remember in the ’50s my father saying, ‘There are over 5,000 foals this year. How am I going to keep up with all these damn pedigrees?’ I don’t know that it is all bad to have an emphasis more on quality than quantity.”

Racing historian Edward Bowen is concerned about the smaller crops. He’s skeptical that the quality is higher overall and concerned about the market contraction’s impact on the future of small farms.

“The bottom-bred [lower-priced] Thoroughbred is still a remarkable animal capable of attracting all the things that drive the business,” Bowen said. “It is useful socially to continue an agricultural activity at a time where there is a lot chipping away at agriculture as it was traditionally operated.”

Many in the industry believe the U.S. ultimately will benefit from fewer but high-quality racing days. Again, Bowen said he is not sure this change will make racing more competitive with other sporting and entertainment options.

“You may not like everything about non-elite racing, but I still think it is a good product,” he said. “I think it is an appealing thing for people to go to their local racetrack and follow certain horses. I don’t think it would be fine if we just had the elite tracks and nothing else.”

And while Bowen acknowledges the steady decline in attendance at racetracks, he also sees plenty of innovation that could slow or even reverse this trend. Arkansas’ Oaklawn Park successfully introduced a show bet bonus this year that helped more fans experience the thrill of cashing a winning ticket. Churchill Downs and Fair Grounds in Louisiana have created racing clubs that introduce fans to horse ownership for a one-time investment of $500.

Even as the foal crop has shrunk, Kentucky has continued building on its dominant position both nationally and internationally. Kentucky-bred Thoroughbreds make up 37.4 percent of the North American foal crop, compared with 29 percent in 2008. Hancock said he doesn’t see anything that would weaken Kentucky’s standing in the decades ahead, with an important caveat—the industry must be more aggressive about getting “drugs and thugs” out of racing.

“We have a great sport, and the horse is noble animal,” Hancock said. “But it all centers around the horse, and we have to clean it up. Horses used to average 45 lifetime starts; now they average around 11. Think of the economic ramifications of all that. I don’t think it is all bad to get into a niche industry, but it has to be clean or you won’t have any public confidence. If we don’t, then we may not be around much in 25 years. If we do, then we’ll be just fine. I believe that with all I am.”

It may not be much of a stretch to say that Dr. Thomas Walker was the first tourist to visit what is now Kentucky back in 1750. Walker, along with a cadre of axmen, found their way through a narrow gap in the mountainous terrain of eastern Kentucky in search of new land to speculate and game to hunt. He found both. It was 19 years later, in 1769, that Daniel Boone’s foray along Walker’s path led to the real influx of people coming to Kentucky.

It’s a safe bet that in 1792, when Kentucky gained statehood, the word “tourism” hadn’t been spoken. However, that was about to change.

Through the Cumberland Gap by way of what was called the Wilderness Road, settlers came with their families to live. Some returned to Virginia telling others about this new place—Kentucky.

It wasn’t until the early 1920s that the state began to realize the potential of attracting visitors to see its natural wonders and raw beauty. Cumberland Falls, Natural Bridge and Red River Gorge were just some of the draws. But it was Mammoth Cave in south-central Kentucky that was the bedrock of state tourism. As far back as the 1830s, the cave was promoted to “outsiders” who arrived initially by stagecoach, then by train and later, as the roads improved, by car.

Private landowners were in control of many of the state’s natural attractions, and it wasn’t until 1919 that state government began to take a look at becoming involved.

Though Kentucky doesn’t officially have a designated father of tourism, Willard Rouse Jillson might just fit the bill. A geologist by profession, he published an individual map of each of the state’s 120 counties.

In 1924, when the Kentucky General Assembly created a State Parks Commission consisting of three members, Jillson was a logical choice to oversee it. The commission was charged with identifying future park sites throughout the Commonwealth. The criteria were physical excellence, great natural beauty or superb historic importance, with conservation being an important part of the decision.

A few months later, Jillson’s commission identified Cumberland State Park to be the first of what would become Kentucky’s centerpiece of tourism promotions. The park, located in Bell County not far from Cumberland Gap, was renamed Pine Mountain State Park in 1938.

More and more travelers from the Midwest began to find their way into Kentucky on roads that were no longer mud and ruts, but instead, a combination of oil and gravel.

As wild as it may seem, roadside tourism was popping up all along the two main north-south corridors—Highways 31W and 25. Every hamlet, town and city throughout Kentucky was vying for attention, hoping travelers would stop and buy a souvenir, postcard or ticket to something; eat a meal; fill up the gas tank; or spend the night.

Privately owned touristy places like caves, hotels, springs, rock formations, waterfalls, and arts and crafts centers advertised in publications throughout Indiana, Illinois, Ohio and Michigan. Standard Oil of Kentucky even produced its own travel version that included, of course, its gas station locations. But it wasn’t until the state Department of Conservation produced the first travel brochures in 1950 that Kentucky began promoting the entire state. The state’s park system flourished in the decades that followed, and today there are some 50 locations touting lakes, caves, wildlife and scenic views.

The Department of Travel was under the Department of Public Information until 1979, when Gov. Julian Carroll made it a separate division. Then in 1984, Gov. Martha Layne Collins gave tourism its own cabinet position.

Much credit for opening up the state to tourism has to be attributed to good roads. It started with the interstates and parkways, and improvements followed on many of the secondary roads, making it safer and quicker to access areas of Kentucky that previously had been difficult to reach.

While the interstates have been a blessing, they also might be considered a drawback. Kentucky has long been labeled as a “pass-through” state for motorists on the way to Florida. Travelers can enter the state and not have to stop even for a comfort break.

However, there are those visitors who view the Commonwealth as a destination.

“People come to Kentucky because they want to see real America,” said Kristen Branscum, commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Tourism. “And I think we are in perfect position to be a top-tier destination.”

Over the last several years, tourism has seen such a steady growth that it is now the third-largest generator of revenue, trailing only the automotive and healthcare industries. “Our latest numbers show that 24.6 million people visited us, and this resulted in an economic impact of $13.7 billion,” Branscum said. “With that came 186,200 tourism-related jobs and $1.4 billion in tax revenue. I’m very optimistic about our future. Our local officials are starting to realize tourism is an economic engine in Kentucky.”

Branscum pointed out that the state is more than bourbon and horses. “We’re so lucky to have them because they open the door to many of the other attractions we have all over the state,” she said.

Hank Phillips is president of the Kentucky Travel Industry Association that represents some 800 businesses and individuals who have a stake in the travel trade. This umbrella organization is not tax supported but funded through membership fees.

“The key to reaching our potential is raising consumer awareness,” Phillips said. “We’ve got to get more tourism marketing dollars to get our message out. Tourism marketing carries with it an astounding return on investment.”

As for the future, Phillips thinks Kentucky can be a high-demand regional destination with global appeal. “Our sleeping giant of a destination has every bit of the appeal of a California wine country and other regions that are on the minds of travelers from around the world,” he said. “Visitors want the authentic experience Kentucky offers.”

— Gary P. West

Gary P. West is the former executive director of the Warren County Convention & Visitors Bureau and a Kentucky travel writer.